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'I Have No Illusions'

For her inaugural column, editor Susan Glasser sat for an interview last Thursday with Secretary of State John Kerry at his Foggy Bottom office, in a wide-ranging conversation that covered everything from the Iranian nuclear negotiations and the Syrian civil war to the Washington "political babble” about Kerry’s access to the White House. Below is an edited transcript of the interview.

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Secretary of State John Kerry: I’m here a lot more than people think. (Laughter.) The trips get visibility, but I’m here a lot. We’re—we’ve got a big department to run. We just handed out awards to 42 employees, which was really nice—people from all over the world in our department who do great things.

POLITICO Magazine: So it’s been an interesting week, right, to be secretary—lots of challenges in your negotiations. Here’s my question: Who is it tougher to negotiate with? You’ve got—you’re negotiating with the Iranians, you’ve got the Israelis, you’ve got the Democrats on Capitol Hill in your own party, you’ve got the Republicans on Capitol Hill who you just had a tough meeting with yesterday and then, of course, there’s the White House. Of all of those stakeholders—

Kerry: Well, I wouldn’t—I’m not going to get into a balance between them all. I did not consider yesterday tough. It was a visit to colleagues I know well, friends, and they asked a lot of appropriate questions. And that’s part of the job. I’m very happy. I enjoy getting back up on the Hill, frankly, and I enjoy the back and forth.

So I don’t, honestly don’t, calculate this week as tougher than a lot of weeks over the course of the last nine months. I mean, we’ve had Syria, we’ve had Egypt, very few days off in the summer because Egypt and Syria were exploding. So the intensity is just something you—it’s there. And I enjoy the exchange of ideas, and I try to listen carefully to the other point of view. And we had, I thought, a good dialogue yesterday, to be honest with you.

PM: On Iran, is there a deal, do you think, that Congress can accept?

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Kerry: Yeah, I believe absolutely. Of course, I do believe that. And I also believe that the question is: Is there a deal the Iranians will accept? They have to make a decision here regarding their willingness to prove in easy ways that their program is peaceful. This is not a complicated equation in that regard. And everybody, all of us—those in Congress, those in the administration, Prime Minister Netanyahu, Israel, the Gulf region—we all share the same goal, which is an Iran that cannot have a nuclear weapon, will not have a nuclear weapon. And we can guarantee that. And that’s the goal here.

So we may have a difference of sorts of what your start point is or what the tactics are, but I believe very deeply that if you’re—if we’re able to stop their program where it is today, and in fact roll it back from where it is today, we’re making Israel safer because we’re expanding the breakout time. If you don’t have that agreement, every day that goes by they continue their program, and it actually becomes a smaller breakout time and more dangerous for our friends and for Israel.

We also believe very deeply that to hold the sanctions together you need to take into account the views of our sanction partners. And if they see Congress raising sanctions on their own in a moment that they think they’re negotiating in good faith, that could create a real problem in holding the sanctions regime together So there’s no automatic here. I mean, it’s a judgment call. And my judgment is that if you look back to 2003, the Iranians made a very significant offer on their weapons program—on their nuclear program is a better way to put it—but back then they had 164 centrifuges—164. And they made an offer to limit. Now they have 19,000 [centrifuges], and the program is moving faster. And so it gets more dangerous.

So what’s better? Pretending that if you just negotiate and negotiate, you’re actually going to slow—or stopping the program and then negotiating over a six-month [period] with very, very little giveaway in order to do that? Ninety-five percent or more of the sanctions regime will absolutely stay in place right where it is today [under the proposed deal], and all of us believe that is a huge bite out of Iran’s economy, and it’s huge pressure on them.

PM: Why did the French foreign minister call the proposed deal with the Iranians a fool’s errand? What did he mean by that?

Kerry: You have to ask him. I mean, maybe he was being generic in characterizing one particular issue that he had, but I can tell you that we got very quickly with the French to resolve whatever difference there was. And we had our own differences with the text. I mean, this was a text that everybody—

PM: But this was our text.

The P5+1 was absolutely unified—the French, everybody were unified, even though, I might add, the Russians and the Chinese were prepared to accept a lesser, less-demanding document.

Kerry: No, it’s a P5+1 [the six countries negotiating with Iran] text. And the P5+1 included everybody, and all the people in the P5+1—there were brackets around “the”—and we went there [to Geneva] knowing there were brackets. We had to try to resolve it. We resolved a lot of it, and in the end, the P5+1 was absolutely unified—the French, everybody were unified, even though, I might add, the Russians and the Chinese were prepared to accept a lesser, less-demanding document. We were not and others weren’t, but the Russians and Chinese were. So we held out for what we thought was a strong offer, and now everybody is united in that offer. So there’s really no—there’s no fight here. It’s not a—we’re not at odds. We’re actually united and all hoping that we get to a real negotiation on the real meat of it, which is proving that Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon, will not have a nuclear weapon, and that we have a failsafe guarantee of that.

PM: So you talked a little about almost a constant crisis mode since you’ve been in the job—I mean, Syria and Egypt this summer, and now these negotiations with Iran. There’s always second-guessers and Monday morning quarterbacks here in Washington. Jackson Diehl wrote a—

Kerry: I’ve read ’em.

PM: —scathing column this week, which I’m sure had to wound in some way.

Kerry: I’m inured to all of that by now in my life. I’ve been through everything anybody can write in a run for president and run, what, five times for the Senate. I just think he’s incorrect. I mean, he’s entitled, obviously, to his opinion. He has opinions. But I don’t think that’s accurate whatsoever. I am very realistic and very—I’m not running around telling everybody all these things are going to be solved in—I’ve never said that.

PM: You’re not a cockeyed optimist.

I have no illusions. But I would ask Jackson Diehl and anyone else who was critical of our engagement: What is the alternative?

Kerry: I am an optimist because I am one by nature; in this job, you have to be. But I am not running around suggesting to people anything is easy or will happen quickly. Never suggested that ever. These are very complicated, very tough issues, all of which will take time. If the Middle East peace was easy, it would’ve been done a long time ago. I have no illusions. But I would ask Jackson Diehl and anyone else who was critical of our engagement: What is the alternative?